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09-11-2015, 21:04
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In his essay ‘The Man Who Ate Everything’ Jeffrey Steingarten argues that (a) food critics really cannot claim authority if they have aversions to particular ingredients; and (b) that such aversions, should they exist, can be fairly easily overcome.When it comes to beer there are people who don’t like lager (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/loving-lout.html), or find stout too intense, or think hoppy IPAs ‘taste like a mouthful of soap (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/08/craft-beer-indepedent-brewers-micro-ed-cumming#comment-62953054)‘. Some people just don’t like beer full stop.*There’s nothing wrong with that — people ought to drink what they enjoy drinking — but those who have a niggling sense that they’re missing out could try Steingarten’s method:
We come into the world with a yen for sweets… and a weak aversion to bitterness, and after four months develop a fondness for salt…*And that’s about it. Everything else is learned. Newborns are not repelled even by the sight and smell of putrefied meat crawling with maggots…*Most parents give up trying novel foods on their weanlings after two or three attempts and then complain to the pediatrician; this may be the most common cause of fussy eaters and finicky adults — of omnivores manqués. Most babies will accept nearly anything after eight or ten tries.
With that principle in mind, after eating each*on ten or so different occasions, Steingarten grew to love kimchi (Korean pickle), clams, anchovies, and various other foodstuffs that had previously made him turn green. In most cases, it seems that exposure wasn’t really the key — it was actually forcing himself to eat enough examples that he eventually happened upon a good one — but the message is the same: keep trying.
For this to work in weaning you on to a beer style of which you are sceptical*you would, like Steingarten, have to genuinely*want to get to like it. If you are determined to resist because, for example, not liking lager is a dogmatic position rather than really a matter of taste, it wouldn’t make any difference.
You might also, we suppose, use the same technique to increase your tolerance for extremes of bitterness, sweetness, sourness, booziness, yeastiness, or whatever characteristic it is in general that you find challenging in beer.
But it* (http://boakandbailey.com/tag/john-smiths-experiment-2012/)probably won’t help you learn to love a beer that is just, at it’s core, a bit shit (http://boakandbailey.com/tag/john-smiths-experiment-2012/).
We’re not quite sure of the publication history of the essay: it’s dated 1989 and 1996 in the book of the same name so we think it must have appeared in*Vogue in 1989. You can read it in full on the* (https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/steingarten-everything.html)New York Times*website. (https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/steingarten-everything.html)
Drink It Until You Like It (http://boakandbailey.com/2015/11/drink-it-until-you-like-it/) from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007 (http://boakandbailey.com)


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